Coincidence

They were both broken. He came from a broken family with, divorced parents and a rebel yet overly achieving older brother. He lived with his mother. And the brother that he never spoke off, or spoke to stayed with his father. She was worse though; her father left her when she was just two, her mother was never at home always out with a new man. She was constantly bullied in school.

“Why did he even pick you, out of everyone?” the girls would ask rather jealously “I mean look at yourself; so scrawny, so pathetic.” they would laugh.

When she was at a party with him, she would sit on the side and watch on as he mingled and laughed with his friends and their girlfriends.

Maybe that’s why she decided to obliterate from her memory: all the sneers, all the times that she had been forgotten and all the constant death threats with two bottles every day.

Soon the two bottles turned to five, then to nine then to so many that even, she could not count. He didn’t know what to do, seeing someone that he loved, go through all this was like getting stabbed with a knife over and over. He tried to reach out to her so many times but he couldn’t.

The more he tried to control her the more she would drink her sorrows away. He decided to take her to rehab. But just when things were getting better she would relapse. This went on thrice; her getting better, then relapsing.

He thought he was trying his best but in reality he wasn’t. All she needed was for him to be by her side and stand up to the people that brought her down. All she needed was for him to have those late night conversations that they used to; instead of him going to a party to celebrate another win. All she wanted him to do was, to spend a little bit more time with her at lunch; instead of going to sit at the ‘popular table’.

She relapsed again for the fourth time and once again he took her to rehab. He dropped her off at 8:00am on Saturday on the side walk of the building.

“I’ll be back to pick you up at 12” he had said. But in reality he had had enough. He realized that she was bringing him down. Yes it hurt him so much to do so but he couldn’t take it anymore, he had much more to do, and to concentrate on than her. He couldn’t care less about what happened to her, because he was finally in a place that he wanted to be in. Somewhere in the back of his mind a thought nagged him, that she was the one that helped him when no one else would, she was the one that offered him the comfort that he once desperately needed. But he needed now to get away from her, even though he knew what he was doing was wrong.

That day when she saw him drive off. She made up her mind that she would change, for herself and him. She would become a better and stronger person.

But at 12 she waited and waited for him to show up, but he didn’t. She called him so many times but he wouldn’t pick up. It then dawned on her that he had probably had enough. It hurt her so much, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that he was right in leaving her behind. She knew that he was better off without her, and her without him. But that didn’t mean that she would not stick to her vow of changing. She was going to college in a month time and she had to sober up.

She did try calling him a couple of times when she got home but he never picked up. She saw him in school on Monday but he didn’t once give her a glance. The news of their supposed break up had spread like wild fire and the girls gave her looks of fake sympathy. She hated him so much. Not because he left her, no, but because he didn’t even have the courage to talk to her up front about it, or to confront her in anyway.

She now had a fire of determination burning within her to prove him wrong, to prove every single one of them wrong.

Two years later practically everyone from the next four states knew him as the amazing football player. He has everyone literally eating out of his hands, yet he feels empty. He feels used. He knows for a fact that all his friends are fake and they care not about him but his name. He does think about her occasionally, and what she would be up to. Especially now that he is driving through his home town once again. He knew when he received the invitation for his father’s engagement party that many memories would come flooding back, as soon as he saw the familiar surroundings of his home town.

He wasn’t prepared to go home, just yet so he stopped at the local store to get himself an energy drink. At the refrigerator section a couple of meters away from him were two girls who happened to be laughing their heads off. He looked at them, from the corner of his eyes’ then looked back at the cold freezer. Then he froze as realization dawned upon him. It was her. His heart hammered against his chest. He didn’t recognize her at first because she looked different from when he last saw her. But the different was good, in fact amazing. He looked back up again to get a better look but she was walking away, her cheery laughter echoing behind her.

He now stands in a tuxedo with a wine glass in his hand. He is frustrated because he knows no one. He never really got along well with his father’s side of the family, also he wasn’t too keen on the idea of having a step-mum this late in his life. Also for the first time in years he would see the one person he hated the most, his brother.

His brother was a year and a half older than him, one would expect them to be the best of friends. But they have actually always hated each other. His brother, though the rebel; has always gotten credit for literally everything, and that’s why he has always hated him with a passion. He always asked himself how someone who has gone to jail, gotten into plenty of fights and done things that are beyond imaginable can be so loved.

The thing that he didn’t know was that his brother was someone who stood up for what he felt was right, a person who would never give up on anything that he cared about.

He was dreading the moment where they would inevitably have to meet, he kept glancing towards the front door to know when he would enter so that he could avoid him.

But it just so happened that when his brother did enter he could not take his eyes off him. Why? Because of the gorgeous girl that his brother had his arm around. Everything about her was beautiful from the way she walked with her head held high to the way that her skin glowed. She looked healthy and beautiful in her blue gown. He released a breath that he didn’t realize he was holding in.

She had a huge pearly and genuine smile plastered on her face as she greeted everyone around her together with his brother.

He watched them from a distance, his eyes not wanting to accept what they saw. He watched as they both greeted his father with hugs and smiles.

They drew nearer but didn’t seem to take notice of him, they seemed so wrapped up in their own little bubble. He was close enough to hear what they were saying if they spoke in their normal tones.

His brother bent down to whisper something in her ear. It made her bring out a rather melodious laugh. His brother looked down at her with love, grinning like a mad idiot. She finally stopped laughing but she couldn’t stop smiling. She then looked up to him with pure adoration in her eyes and said something that made his chest burn.

“You know I love you so much, right?”

“How could I ever forget?” his brother replied whilst leaning down to plant a kiss on her lips.

He couldn’t take it anymore so he looked away. So many emotions raged within his body, but the most prominent ones were jealousy, anger and sadness; though he knew he had no right to feel any of those. His heart ached at hearing her say that to his brother; yet he didn’t know why.

The way she looked into his brother’s eyes’ haunted him. He remembered the time when she used to look at him in that way. With so much love, as if he was her world. But now she looked at his enemy in that way.

As she smiled up at him and looked into his hazel eyes after kissing him. She couldn’t help but grin involuntarily. He was the man she loved from the very bottom of her heart. He was the one who cared enough and stuck by her no matter what, no matter how many times she had given up. She is, who she is today because of him. She was in a condition that she described as pure bliss. She had people that cared for her, all thanks to the man standing before her, she never felt alone, all because of him. Even words could not express how amazing she felt inside.

And as she stared at the man she now loved with all heart and might, she didn’t notice the retreating figure of the man she loved once upon a time. She had forgiven him though, which meant that she no longer hated him. But it is only because of his brother, that, she had found the heart to even forgive him in the first place. Yet she didn’t know that the two shared the same blood. She knew that if he wouldn’t have left her, she would have probably never loved another. The guy she loved right now was in fact the one who even told her to forgive him. But that’s because he didn’t know that it was his failure of a younger brother that hurt her. Little did she know, that if, the guy she stood with right now, ever did find out who it was that had left her waiting on that Saturday two years ago. That person that was just a distant memory to her now, would not be spared at all by the man she loved now.